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LSD and the Law: a Framework for Policy Making Stephen D University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 1970 LSD and the Law: A Framework for Policy Making Stephen D. Ford Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Ford, Stephen D., "LSD and the Law: A Framework for Policy Making" (1970). Minnesota Law Review. 2351. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/2351 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LSD and the Law: A Framework for Policy Making Stephen D. Ford* I. INTRODUCTION The law's regulation of drugs in our society has not always been rational. The present article grows out of a conviction that the law's approach to the regulation of LSD is a prime example of such irrationality. Anti-LSD laws have been born of panic and, more often than not, fathered by ignorance-ignorance of the drug itself and ignorance of the likelihood of achieving the lawmakers' ends. Indeed, study of many of the laws directed against LSD leads one to conclude that in some cases legislators had no clearly perceived ends. Little attention appears to have been given to the fruits of medical experience and research. This article is intended to correct this situation by attempting to outline a realistic program for the control of LSD in light of present knowledge about the drug and its effects. The frame- work of the analysis, however, is applicable generally when the question of legal regulation of other drugs arises, for the questions asked and the answers offered constitute an approach to one social problem which can be used in solving similar problems. For example, this type of analysis should be useful in answer- ing the question of how the law should deal with marijuana. The latter is rapidly becoming a major social issue, but legis- lative reaction usually has been no more informed than in the case of LSD. One must, of course, recognize that factors other than med- ical evidence may have to be considered by policy-makers faced with the question of whether the law should regulate a given drug. Even if the evidence provided by medicine leads to the conclusion that there is no more reason to regulate LSD than there is to regulate aspirin, legislative inquiry is not ended, for there may still be sociological, political, economic or cultural rea- sons for imposing some regulation. On the other hand, if med- icine provides the law with abundant reason to regulate, other considerations become less significant. With this framework in * Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration, Uni- versity of Iowa. The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Mr. James Anderson, J.D., 1969, University of Iowa College of Law. MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 54:775 mind, this article will outline present medical knowledge con- cerning LSD, indicate some of the major issues of LSD control which we must face as a result of this knowledge, and suggest the directions and extent of regulation which are warranted. My present aim is, therefore, modest. Only some of the issues of the general problem of drug control are examined. If in what fol- lows not all of the answers are found, nevertheless, we may at least learn to ask the relevant questions. II. THE DRUG, HOW IT WORKS AND WHAT IT DOES A. Tm DRUG LSD is the synthetic diethylamide of lysergic acid, which is derived from ergot, a parasitic fungus growing on rye and wheat. It was first synthesized by Stoll and Hofmann in Basle, Switzer- land, in 1938,1 and its effects on the human mind were discovered 2 in 1943 when Hofmann accidentally ingested a small amount. Whereas the dosages of most drugs are measured in milligrams (thousandth's of a gram), LSD dosages are commonly measured in micrograms or gammas (millionth'sl of a gram). While an average dose of LSD may be 100 to 500 micrograms, a dose as small as 25 micrograms may have an effect. LSD's 32-year history is well-chronicled, and it may surprise those whose acquaintance with the drug dates only from the recent period of its widespread abuse and publicity that there was a time when those who knew it best seem to have had few doubts of its potential for good.3 Research soon began to reveal some of the reactions which LSD could induce in the human mind, such as simulated states of schizophrenia and affective psychoses. 4 It was early found that the body rapidly establishes 1. DeShon, Rinkel & Solomon, Mental Changes Experimentally Produced by LSD, 26 PSYCHIAT. Q. 33 (1952). 2. Stoll & Hofmann, Partialsynthese von AlkalZiden vom Typus des Ergobasins, 26 HELvET. CHim. AcmA. 944 (1943). See Laughlin, LSD-25 and the Other Hallucinogens: A Pe-Reform Proposal, 36 GEo. WAsH. L. REv. 23, 27 n.23 (1967), for a brief discussion of the history and sources of the other hallucinogens-peyote, mescaline, psilocybin (psilocin), DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and marijuana (cannabis). 3. Busch & Johnson, LSD-25 As an Aid in Psychotherapy, 11 Dis. NEv. SYsT. 241 (1950). 4. Bercel, Olinger & Dreikurs, Model Psychoses Induced by LSD- 25 in Normals, 75 AMA ARCH. NEuROL. PSYCHIAT. 588 (1956). For sum- maries of and citations to the literature of the early learning, see The Pharmacology of Psychotomimetic and Psychotherapeutic Drugs, 66 Amq. N.Y. AcAD. Sci. 417-840 (1957) (a series of conference papers), and Unger, Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin, and Personality Change: A Review, 26 PsycHIATRY 111 (1963) (a gcod general introduction to many of the topics dealt with in the present paper). 19701 LSD AND THE LAW tolerance to the drug, so that an increase in dosage is necessary to maintain the same effects with continued use.5 LSD does not produce a physiological dependence (some- times called "addiction"), nor do any of the hallucinogens. On the other hand, these drugs can result in a psychological de- pendence (sometimes called "habituation"). 6 B. How IT WoRKs Unhappily, we do not know for certain how LSD brings about its observed effects. 7 Where it goes after ingestion has been established, but we still lack knowledge of its biochemistry -how it interacts with various parts of the human body. Two groups of investigators, s using radioactive LSD, found traces of LSD in almost all the body tissues, with the largest concentra- tions in the liver, intestines and kidneys and the smallest con- centration in the brain. Researchers have theorized that the liver transforms LSD into another chemical and that it is this latter compound which causes the mental phenomena. These obser- vations were confirmed by subsequent investigators, who found that the drug goes rapidly to the liver, spleen, kidneys and adrenals and is excreted rapidly from the liver into the intes- tinal tract. There it apparently enters the general metabolism, because almost none appears in the urine, stool or breath.9 5. Cholden, Kurland & Savage, Clinical Reactions and Tolerance to LSD in Chronic Schizophrenia, 122 J. NERv. MENT. Dis. 211 (1955). This tolerance disappears rapidly when drug usage ceases. See Isbell, et al., Studies on Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD-25), 76 AMA ARcH. NEuROL. PsYcir.AT. 468 (1956). 6. Barron, Jarvik & Bunnell, The Hallucinogenic Drugs, 210 ScL Am. 29, 36 (No. 4, Apr. 1964). 7. Lyons, Science's Knowledge on the Misuse of Drugs and How They Act is Found to Lag, N.Y. Times, Jan. 9, 1968, at 18, col. 7. 8. Boyd, Rothlin, Bonner, Slater & Hodge, Preliminary Studies on the Metabolism of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, 113 J. PHAMVIcoL. & Expm. THsnA'. 6 (1955); Stoll, Rothlin, Rutschmann & Schalch, Distribution and Fate of 14C-labeled Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD- 25) in the Animal Body, 11 EXPERummNTA 396 (1955). 9. Rothlin & Cerletti, Pharmacology of LSD-25, in LYsERGic Acm Dm'ILmmE AND MEscALvui iN EXP mENTAL PsYcHuTRY 1, 3 (L. Cholden ed. 1956); Axelrod, et al., The Distribution and Metabolism of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, 66 ANx. N.Y. ACAD. Sci. 435 (1957) (experiment in which cat tissues were examined after animal was given LSD); Idiinpiin-Heikkila & Schoolar, LSD: Autoradiographic Study on the Placental Transfer and Tissue Distribution in Mice, 164 ScMNcE 1295 (1969) (movement of the drug from the pregnant female to the fetus). For discussion of the biochemistry of LSD in the human body, see Dixon, Evidence of Catecholamine Mediation in the "Aberrant" Be- MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 54:775 C. WHAT IT DOES A WHAT IT CAN Do Despite the lack of definitive answers as to how LSD reacts chemically in the human body, we may take comfort in the fact that policy-makers need not be concerned with the "how" of LSD action, so much as the behavior which may be expected of those who have taken the drug. It is this behavior which the law will seek to regulate, in the interests of society at large or even to save the LSD user from himself. Fortunately, the symp- toms of the LSD reaction and the behavior of those under its influence have been widely studied.'0 1. "Standard"Reactions The method by which LSD is administered has no appar- ent effect upon the type of reaction. The rapidity of onset of symptoms, however, is affected by the method of administration, with intramuscular injection being more rapid than oral inges- tion, and intravenous or intraspinal application being most rapid of all."- Regardless of how the drug is taken, subsequent ad- ministration of any one of several counteracting drugs-sodium amytal, methamphetamine, chlorpromeine-neutralizes the ef- fects.12 The physiological and test performance responses most com- monly observed in LSD users have been described as follows: The basic physiological effects are those typical of a mild excitement of the sympathetic nervous system.
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